"In a way, dissociative identity disorder is its own actual superpower."
Oscar Isaac plays a superhero suffering from dissociative identity disorder in Marvel's "Moon Knight." Here's why he says we should challenge what "super" means for heroes and villains alike ...
Oscar Isaac plays a superhero suffering from dissociative identity disorder in Marvel's "Moon Knight." Here's why he says we should challenge what "super" means for heroes and villains alike ...
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00:00In a way, Dissociative Identity Disorder, it's its own actual real superpower.
00:29For me, it was important to orient the entire show around that, that it wasn't just an element
00:34of his backstory or a plot point, but it was actually everything is oriented by that fact,
00:42and that everything that you see is an expression of his disorder or of his struggle.
00:49I spoke with psychiatrists.
00:51I read a lot.
00:52In particular, there is this book called A Fractured Mind by Robert Oxman.
00:58It's his autobiography about discovering that he has Dissociative Identity Disorder
01:02and how he started to learn to integrate parts of his personality in order to heal.
01:08I'm losing it.
01:09We'll catch you all.
01:10You're bloody useless, Stevie.
01:11Steven.
01:12And when that is your protagonist, you need to find an antagonist that's somehow different
01:25than that.
01:26For most of the genre of superheroes, the legend of most heroes is they're sane and
01:31they have an opponent who's insane and that they have to conquer to become their hero
01:36self.
01:37And Oscar's character is so complex that his journey is really an internal one.
01:42I needed to create a villain or an antagonist that was somehow opposite, and so that was
01:47to be a very sane lunatic.
01:59As I talked to Oscar a lot, it became very apparent when he was deep in study of DID
02:05and that disorder operates in a dream language, in a dream landscape, and we were using that
02:13as a point of view for the film, that the film, you have an unreliable narrator.
02:18He's telling you this story, but he doesn't even know himself.
02:21And so that got me thinking a lot about Carl Jung and his study of dreams, and I started...
02:26There's a certain cult leader aspect to Carl Jung, to any great psychoanalyst.
02:33They have a power, a mind power over other people, and they understand it because they've
02:38suffered from it.
02:45At first, I was like, I want to create an indelible character.
02:47If I'm going to do this, I want to find a character that I'm going to be excited to
02:50do every day.
02:52And so because it was set in London, it was a very practical reason it was set in London,
02:57it's because they already have too many superheroes that are in New York, so they're like, well,
03:01let's just do it in London.
03:02But he wasn't written as English, and I thought, well, this is a good opportunity to create
03:07a character that we haven't seen in the MCU.
03:11And I thought about what I would find funny, like, what kind of character would I like
03:15to see having to talk to all these superheroes?
03:17And out of that, slowly, this guy emerged, Stephen Grant.
03:21And once I found him, then it was about creating the counterpoint, which is Mark, right?
03:25So you've got this guy that's desperate to connect with people, and then you've got this
03:28other personality that, although is confident and knows about the world, is pushing everyone
03:34away.
03:35Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks I'm the bad guy, I mean, bad woman.
03:39We all see ourselves, for the most part, as the hero of our own life, and we justify
03:45our actions based on our set of beliefs.
03:48And what if your beliefs were so extreme that you could understand who was good or bad and
03:53could decide what, how to punish said people, but it was entirely up to you, and study history
03:59for five minutes and you'll see the corruptive nature of power, right?
04:10I got him drunk.
04:12Yeah.
04:13I got him drunk.
04:15We got drunk, we were playing cards, he was going to be in my movie, but instead I lost,
04:19I had to be in his movie.
04:21No.
04:23I think we really wanted to work together.
04:24Well, I don't know, you answered the question.
04:25We had, yeah.
04:26We wanted to work together.
04:27I didn't want to work with him.
04:28I knew he lived in the neighborhood.
04:30I was watching The Good Lord Bird at the time, I mean, I've seen all of Ethan's work, and
04:34I just happened to be watching that at the moment.
04:37When we were talking about making Harrow into more of a cult leader, a religious fanatic,
04:42I mean, he was just in this show just killing it as a religious fanatic and making a very
04:46complicated character, and I mentioned that to Muhammad, and Muhammad had already been
04:50talking to Ethan about another project, and then I ran into him at a coffee shop and we
04:56just started talking about it.
04:58Sometimes you just follow your nose in life like everybody does, and it just felt like
05:02a good group of people, and it seemed to organically happen to us, and we just ran with it.